I want to donate my A30, but not the personal info on it.

[jidx]

I recently upgraded my A30 to an T400 and have no use for my A30. The specs on it are pretty good and my church could certainly use it. How do I wipe the contents of my hard drive and restore the computer to an operational state? I do not have any of IBM discs and I do not belive my hard drive has a partition with any IBM data on it. I was reading on the subject of wiping a hard drive and DBAN would certainly take care of that. What do I do next? I do have a copy of Windows XP. Would simply installing XP make my system operational? Does anyone have experience doing this? Thank you!

[jdhurst]

Since you are giving it to your church (highly decent of you), you could at little cost go a step further and see if you can get a set of recovery CD's from Lenovo, from eBay or here in the forum. I do not have a set, or I would assist you. Maybe someone else has a set that they could let you have for a nominal sum.
.... JDH

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum, jidx!

Let me know what your A30's model number is (265?-???) and I'll send you a set of recovery disks that your machine has the COA for, or was originally shipped with.

[yak]

If you have a Windows XP disk, you can use it to install a clean system on the laptop. The problem with this solution is that you will have to download and install some drivers afterwards. These drivers are already included if you're installing from recovery disks.

If you want to go this route, simply boot from the Windows XP disk, it will let you repartition and format the hard drive during installation. After you're done, install the network drivers to get it connected to the Internet. Then download and install the System Update program. It will let you easily download and install all the other drivers and ThinkVantage software applicable to your system.

I'm sure many people have done this so you should easily get some help here if you're stuck. My T60 runs Vista installed this way.

[jidx]

2652-14u is my model number. Thank you for your help.

[RealBlackStuff]

@yak:
Ever heard of activation?
Yours is not a good idea...

[yak]

@yak:
Ever heard of activation?
Yours is not a good idea...

I assumed he has got a genuine Windows XP disk, with unique CD-key. It wouldn't be a problem in such case, no?

[RealBlackStuff]

It wouldn't, but he says he has a COPY, or it may be his own XP disk.
Unless it's a corporate version, that XP can be installed on only 1 PC/laptop.

[yak]

You're right. I somehow missed the word "copy". My bad.

[jidx]

Its an original XP disc that I used to upgrade from Windows 2000 that originally came with my ThinkPad. I have the sticker with the Key on it. I can use it to load it on the same PC right?

[rkawakami]

My understanding is that if you have a retail copy of XP, you are only legally allowed to install it from that disk onto one system at a time. If there's another system which has already been activated using the provided key, then it might be possible to contact Microsoft and explain to them that the previous installation is now dead but my guess is that they will assign you a new key and possibly charge you for that process.